welcome to spiceland.

Mom and Dad said that as soon as I was able to ride my tricycle well enough I’d get a big girl bike. See, they got this tricycle when I was 2 years old and couldn’t reach the pedals. My tricycle may have been pretty and red, but it was hard to ride. Even after I figured it out, it wasn’t very fast.

Tru on her new big girl bike

My tricycle days are over! I’m cruising in style now on my pink princess big girl bike. It was just different enough to pedaling the tricycle that it took me a little while to figure it out, but after a day and a half, I’ve mastered it. My dad tied his remote controlled car to the front of it to help me go up hills. I don’t even need that anymore!

What’s next? I still need to figure out how to stop. I hear that if I pedal backwards it will put on the brakes and stop, but hey, one thing at a time. For now, I just turn off the sidewalk into the grass, and that does the job. Also, Dad has just been running after me (sometimes with Heidi in a stroller). Pretty soon, we can all go on a bike ride together!

We had a great Easter. We’ve been avoiding church this winter and watching sermons at home from Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church to avoid putting Heidi in the nursery during flu season. We did go to church this Sunday, though. We took Heidi to the service with us, which she previously had not tolerated well at all. She was great! She behaved while awake and slept through the sermon. She thoroughly enjoyed the choir’s rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus at the end of the service, proof she is a Pinder after all! Pictures here.

We also dyed and hid eggs and made Easter baskets for the kids. We read the resurrection story out of John and explained to Tru that Easter eggs represent life. Baby chickens come out of their eggs alive just like Jesus came out of his grave alive. We also gave Tru a LeapFrog Leapster game system for Easter. We weren’t planning on getting her such a big gift, but we got it on sale at Target. She loves it.

My birthday is today. I’m 27 years old. We celebrated with some friends last Saturday at Surin of Thailand in Huntsville. It was a wonderful evening full of food and friendship! Mike got me a brand new laptop battery for my laptop, which seriously needed replacing! My laptop is actually portable now. Previously, my battery life was only about 30 minutes. I should get at least an hour and a half off of this new one. Tru got me some very pretty jewelry. We had a crockpot roast for dinner and a delectable chocolate Snickers birthday cake. YUM.

There are also more pictures here of Tru at her friend Fisher’s house on Easter.

Here is a video I found while cleaning off my desktop which I do not believe we have posted yet. This is me clownishly trying to get Heidi to say “dada” around age 8 months.

I’ll also update concerning the last post about Heidi signing. After that one incident, she seemed to have forgotten how to sign for a couple of days. My urging did not provoke her to sign again until tonight. Mike made oatmeal cookies tonight, though. She was sitting in my lap while I was eating one, and she started clapping out of the blue. I clapped along for a moment before I realized she was actually saying “more,” not clapping. I fed her bits of cookie and made her say “more” for each additional bite. She probably signed “more” about 8 times tonight.

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